I know the right way to do the dishes

Kirk Ericson | May 11, 20230

I remember this.

I was around 5 years old the first time I did the dishes. It happened at the kitchen sink in my family’s house, a home that was built on the then-expanding edge of the city limits of Spokane in the 1950s. I stood on a stool. Light from the sun streamed through the windows.

That is my origin story.

I learned early, and I learned well. I entered the professional dishwashing ranks when I was age 17, working in a steamy, fetid, after-thought of a space next to the kitchen at Clinkerdagger, Bickerstaff and Petts, a swanky-for-Spokane downtown restaurant that overlooked the Spokane River. I learned many of the cooks at that restaurant in those days used amphetamines, but I performed clean. My achievements in the dishwashing pit were not tainted by foreign or domestic substances.

I got really good at washing dishes. I developed advanced skills, such as being able to catch a dropped wine glass in the crook of my foot, preventing it from shattering on the tile floor. I could empty a full bus tray and load it into the conveyor dishwasher in three minutes — while picking out and eating portions of uneaten desserts. I could flip the pewter water goblets into their holding racks from 2 feet away.

I eventually moved on, washing dishes in other cities — Seattle, Bellingham, Skagway, Alaska.

I’m an amateur dishwasher now, applying my craft in my grownup house, a home where the sun’s light sometimes streams through the windows.

Here are some lessons I’ve learned about washing dishes. If you apply my advice, I semi-guarantee you that you’ll develop a marginally healthier and maybe a slightly more rewarding relationship with your dirty dishes.

■ Approach your pile of dirty dishes with the same conviction one needs when changing a baby’s diaper or invading a nation. In all three of those efforts, you need to apply overwhelming force to achieve your objectives, which are to finish as quickly and as neatly as you can. There can be no retreat in diaper-changing, war or dishwashing.

■ You cannot announce that you’ve “done the dishes” unless you’ve done ALL the dishes. And doing the dishes includes mucking out the sink and cleaning the counters. Occasional dispensation can be given for letting a gunked-up pan soak in hot soapy water in the sink, but one should not abuse that privilege.

■ Fit the dishes into the dishwasher like you’re putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Wasting space in a dishwasher is the highest sin for a dishwasher. Turn the handles of the coffee mugs in the same direction. Pack like things with like things — plates with plates, bowls with bowls, mugs with mugs. Don’t put pots, pans or Tupperware in the dishwasher. That violates the don’t waste space commandment. Be like a female mason bee. Use every available centimeter of your nest for the greatest good.

■ The person who washes the dishes should not be the same person who empties the dishwasher or the drying rack. To maintain conjugal felicity in your residence, split those duties.

■ When you’ve finished the dishes, don’t make a major pronouncement that you’ve finished the dishes. That promotes rancor in the home. Do the dishes without expecting credit, much like Jesus, reportedly, didn’t expect credit for raising the dead.